Fish loses pounds and gains weight as a player

WASHINGTON - In the big pond of professional tennis, a smaller Mardy Fish is rocking boats like never before. Going on 29 and in his 11th year on tour, Fish - for so long chasing, and not quite gaining on, vast early potential - suddenly is riding an 11-match, two-tournament winning streak and soaring in the rankings.

With the U.S. Open on the horizon, just 26 days away, Fish is experiencing the best stretch of his career, and it's all because he lightened up. Literally.

He has lost 33 pounds since undergoing knee surgery late last September. He gave up cheeseburgers, pizza, late-night snacks. He cut down on his portions, began eating a lot of . . . fish. And the change improved every aspect of his game.

"I've always worked hard," he said, "but I had to stop when I got tired. I feel like a completely different player, a completely different person. I'm able to train and do things I didn't think I could do - or just couldn't do. I'm able to work longer, on the serve, the backhand, trying to develop a slice."

He went from 203 pounds - he is 6-2 - to 170 earlier this year, and since March 1, has rocketed from 108th in the rankings to 35th. He is 2-0 against the world's No. 4 player, Andy Murray, in 2010 and, two weeks ago, he defeated two of the year's boldface American names - Andy Roddick and John Isner - back-to-back to win the Atlanta tournament, where "it was 150 degrees on the court," he said.

Tuesday, Fish kept rolling in the second round in Washington's U.S. Open tune-up tournament, 6-4, 6-3, over 24-year-old Serb Viktor Troicki, ranked 50th. Fish's target is the Open, where his run to the quarterfinals in 2008 was a rare ray of hope after being beaten at the Open in rounds one, one, two, two, two, one, two and two. (He withdrew from last year's Open with broken ribs.)

But now he has turned the whale-minnow symbolism on its head: Small is good. The skinny, he insisted, was getting skinny, the way Roddick did a year ago on the way to a riveting five-set Wimbledon final against Roger Federer.

"I know Andy tried to lose 10, 15 pounds," Fish said. "He looked great and he felt great. You'd be surprised how much easier you can move around the court . For four, five months, I've been able to get used to shots that I used to not get to, or I'd get to shots and wasn't sure what to do about them because I wasn't used to getting to them."

The son of a teaching tennis pro, born in Minnesota but raised in the youth tennis environment - he once lived a year with Roddick's family to train with Roddick in Florida - Fish was featured in 2001 U.S. Tennis Association's "Who's Next?" promos alongside Roddick, James Blake and other young up-and-comers burdened with replacing the Pete Sampras-Andre Agassi generation.

Weighty stuff. But now . . .